The Greatest Instagram Guide Ever Made For Restaurant Marketing

By Sanjay Gouda

Updated - Feb. 8, 2019
5 min read

Instagram food porn is here to stay. Restaurants are finding new ways to make their online presence better. The Instagram trend is not going away and it is a powerful tool for any kind of business including restaurants to have their presence felt online and attract the right kind of audience. Their target audience can be easily captured if Instagram is used rightly. Creating an organiz buzz and building your brand is getting easier day by day with this online platform. How to use Instagram for restaurant marketing has been a question so many people have tried to answer but we are here to make things easier for you. Food pictures is definitely not the only thing you could do to engage customers and call them in.

1. Make A Story

Chronicle all aspects of your restaurant space from dishes, appetizers, drinks, cocktails, eating space, the way everything is prepared. Post photos and videos at regular intervals to have a loyal audience and to keep them engaged. Explain the dish in the photo or the concept behind it. Play fun games in the captions, ask people for their feedbacks. Regularly hold coupon or discount giveaways for your cutomers to participate, win and have a reason to visit your restaurant.

2. Launch Your New Menu On The Gram

Launching a new menu through an instagramm post or a story is gaining a lot of attraction. Restaurants that have a different menu every season and different food pairings will need a platform to attract new customers according to what they like. Unveiling a new menu or sending out invites for a launch party through instagram has become a great deal in the restaurant social media space. Inviting food bloggers to try the new menu and giving a review on their respective profiles also attract a lot of attention towards your restaurant.

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3. Court Food Bloggers

There's no other social media platform that is well geared for the restaurant industry as this one and food bloggers are helping with this. Get a food blogger to post about your restaurant on their feed and you will get the required right kind of exposure for your brand that you've been looking for. You should be looking for a following anywhere between 30k and 50k because these bloggers have mastered the art of food porn on their feeds. Some of them would be willing to work on barter, some will charge you exhorbitant amounts. Your choice will completely depend on what you need and whether you need more or better.

4. Use Your Captions To Tell A Story

People relate to stories more than they relate to anything else. Make sure your captions have a personal aspect to it but are also witty and funny, so it's not only tempting looking at the food but also interesting to read the way it is described in the caption.Use intagram bio links, double taps, and other call to action buttons on instagram for conversion rates. Learn from the best bloggers about how they promote their content. Keep it as true to your brand as possible but keep people hooked on to what you are posting.

5. Use A Third-Party App For Scheduled Posts

Timing Matters! Switch to a business profile and use the Instagram Analytics tools for figuring out what kind of posts get the maximum engagement and at what time your audience engagement is the highest. Use apps like Later to post at the right time. You can also invest in Later to get their additional features that are really helpful for businesses and their conversions.

6. Use Instagram Stories To Get More Visibility

Since your bio only provides you with one link space, use Instagram stories for instant conversions. Instagram Stories also have a higher reach than posts on your feed. You can use their link button option to direct your followers and other audiences to where you want them to land, maybe on your instagram feed or website or maybe some other page which you are collaborating with.

7. Use More Hashtags

One hashtag brings 12.6% more organic reach than not using a hashtag so do intense hashtag research in the area of your field and use 24 of them in each picture to gather more organic reach and higher organic engagement. The visibility of your post is definitely going to be higher with this strategy. But using "appropriate" hashtags is the key so that you attract your target audience and not just anybody.

8. Encourage Customers To Tag The Restaurants When They Post Their Pictures

The tagged pictures tab in your profile will help you schedule at least a month worth of posts. Use the tagged pictures and repost them on your profile, hence making your customers also happy. Encourage them to use your hashtag and profile in their captions when they post these pictures so you get more visibility from more accounts. You can also find these pictures by clicking the geolocation of your restaurant in the search bar and get more such pictures you can repost.

9. Hold Giveaways & Contests

You can also run a regular contest with food influencers to expand your engagement. Giveaways are a great way to do that. You can give out discount codes, vouchers, and coupon codes as a part of the price of the giveaway. People will love to engage with your page even more because now they have an incentive to do so.